


Sharks and things

by CassFear84



Series: Bottled-up feelings and other calamities [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, s3e03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 17:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassFear84/pseuds/CassFear84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny's got a long list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharks and things

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue.
> 
> Note: I had a million ideas for this episode. Finally, I came up with this. I hope you like it.

He should have known that being on a boat alone with Steve would end up badly. Granted, he’d imagined it would be due to his incapability to hide his emotions in front of the Navy SEAL. Luckily, he hadn’t screwed up his resolve. Unluckily, a boat-jacking, a shark and an arrest had screwed up the afternoon.

It had started well enough. Steve and Danny had been chilling on the boat, fishing and drinking beer. He’d even gathered enough courage to ask about Catherine, as much as it pained him. He just needed some reassurance. He thought he’d noticed a change in Steve’s behavior towards his so-called girlfriend, at least when he was around. Maybe they were growing apart. Not that it would matter, really. But a single Steve was better than a committed-to-that-woman Steve. It would be less stressful for Danny since he wouldn’t be wishing a painful death to an innocent woman, contradictory to his beliefs as that was. He was pleasantly surprised when Steve refused to refer to her as ‘his girlfriend’. In fact, he was pretty adamant about reducing the seriousness of their relationship ‘a thing’. Of course, Danny being Danny, he could not let it go. The funny thing was, the more he asked Steve to label his relationship with Catherine, the more Steve closed down. Either he didn’t want to talk about ‘them’, or he didn’t want to talk to Danny. And seeing as it was Steve’s idea to go fishing in the first place, he assumed it had more to do with Catherine than with himself.

The conversation somehow shifted towards Doris, which wasn’t a topic he enjoyed, but at least it got Steve talking again.

“So you asked your girlfriend to spy on your mother? That can’t turn up well.”

Steve glared at him when he heard the ‘G’ word and shook his head. “Not spy, _locate_ , Danny. And she’s not gonna find out.”

Danny huffed. _Oh, my. What Steve McGarrett knows about women is nothing._ As a more experienced man, he felt the need to enlighten the naïve mind before him.

“Um, OK. She was a spy for 20 years and she’s a woman. Trust me, she’ll know.”

Steve seemed to deflate a little at that. It looked like Danny had won that round. Maybe now he could get an honest answer out of the man. But before he could enquire about Catherine yet again, Steve saw a man on a boat and everything went downhill from there.

So the hijacking was a bust and Danny felt like wringing Steve’s neck. It was so his fault! He didn’t really know how, but it was definitely his fault. The guy was a danger magnet. And as soon as he said it out loud, he regretted it. That was exactly what Rachel liked to say about him. Bad choice of words.

Steve, as always, could see that Danny was distressed about being in the open water like this, so he handed over a plastic bottle and told him to bail. The detective would have argued, as was his custom, except his brain stopped working because: a) they were stranded in the middle of the ocean on a leaking boat –sorry, _dinghy_ —and b) McGarrett had taken off his shirt and that’s the third item in the list of “Things that will eventually be Daniel Williams’ ruin." He was now left with enough brain function to ask stupid questions like “It’s a dinghy. I mean, it can’t sink, right?”

Now, watching Steven swim was always a sight to behold. That is as long as there isn’t a tiger shark in the vicinity and Danny isn’t about to have a heart attack because the unrequited love of his life is about to be torn to fucking pieces right before his eyes.

The fourth item on the list of “Things that will eventually be Daniel William’s ruin”, right under a shirtless Steve, is a calm-in-the-face-of-danger Steve. Which made him feel stupid and embarrassed. And then Steve got that look in his eyes, the one that referred us back to the first item in the list, and asked Danny why he hated the sea so much. Danny had no choice but to be honest, he really didn’t. Even though it hurt like hell to remember Billy and that God-forsaken summer, even if retelling that story brought tears to his eyes and he had to look away to keep them at bay. Even when he knew that saying it out loud would bring back those nightmares that haunted him for years when he was a teenager. He had to tell Steve everything. He just had to. It’s what Steve did to him, without even knowing it. He made him open up in ways he hadn’t in years, not even for Rachel.

The fact that his partner listened like this was the single most important piece of information he had ever gotten only made Danny fall a little more in love, if that was possible. He didn’t remember falling like this for Rachel. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this about _anyone_. He certainly hadn’t ever been attracted to a guy like this either. A little aroused by someone in Academy locker rooms, maybe. But not like this. Not mind-numbing stupid for a shirtless guy. That was new. _Everything_ was.

For a moment there, when they found the yacht, Danny thought it was finally over. He couldn’t bear to be alone with Steve anymore. Not after his confessions about swimming. However, as luck would have it – and it really did have it against him these days – the engine didn’t work and Steve thought he could fix it. Can you think of anything that would be even more arousing than a shirtless, wet Steve? You got it, oil stained Steve. It was all Danny could think about when the Coast Guard arrested them and sat them next to each other. He wasn’t thinking about the mess they were in, or the boat-jacking or the fucking tiger shark. The only thing his mind was able to come up with was his partner’s muscled arms covered in grease. Somebody needed to tell McGarrett that being so naturally hot was against the law, or should be.

He was still thinking about that when they finally reached the shore. Unfortunately for him, Steve was immediately met by an overly-worried Catherine and Danny couldn’t help but grimace at the sight. Max took that for pain and offered him some lotion for his sun burns.

 _It’s not the sun that’s burning me now_ , he thought bitterly as he walked back to car. Seeing them together always felt like being showered in freezing water, no matter how many times he saw them. It always hurt.

After that, Danny focused on the case like a life-line. He needed to. Otherwise, he was going to break something, like his fist against the wall. He worked hard and talked about nothing but the information they had for the rest of the day. He avoided looking at Steve just in case the SEAL realized there was something wrong. If anyone asked him what was going on, he’d yell about the idiot who dared point a gun at him and left him stranded on a fucking dinghy. He let all his frustrations melt into the case. That’s what he always did. That’s what made him such a good detective. That’s why he had 84 solved cases under his belt back in New Jersey.

And at the end of the day, just when he thought he was going to puke after seeing just a little too much of Catherine all day, Steve raised his beer bottle at him and say “To Billy”. Danny smiled gratefully at him, his heart warming. His smile grew even more when he saw that Steve refused to explain the toast to _her_.

Maybe they _were_ just a thing after all.


End file.
